It was pin the tail on the home secretary time in the Commons committee. MPs tottered forward, more or less blindfold, yearning to stick a pin in the immaculately clad minister, who was wearing a light green jacket in a shade I can only call "mushy peas".

Actually, no, block that metaphor! I used to think that being home secretary was like being a rough rider. Even the very best are going to be thrown from the bucking bronco sooner or later. Mrs May has lasted for almost three years.

Now I think it is more like being in a quagmire. At first you feel fine. Your feet are a bit wobbly underneath, and there is an unwelcome sucking noise. Then, just as you realise that things are more difficult than you imagined, you're surrounded by colleagues, all brandishing sticks and brooms. You assume these are for you to clutch and drag yourself to safety. You would be wrong. They are there to push you further into the mire. And that is what the committee was doing.

For example, Mark Reckless, the Tory MP for Rochester, seems to have a special animus against Mrs May, especially over her handling of the Abu Qatada business. He feels she should have been more active in getting the British legal system to help kick out the turbulent cleric. He accused the home secretary of "craven surrender" to the European court. This is harsh stuff.

I could not get out of my head the fact that Mr Reckless, when wearing his glasses, looks almost exactly like Mark Lawson, of the Guardian and Radio 4. My mind kept hovering between the two men. "The reason you haven't got rid of Abu Qatada is that you haven't tested the law! And what gave you the idea of mounting The Sound Of Music in Swahili, at a gutting shed in Grimsby?"

Mrs May dealt with MPs' jibes by the simple process of answering every question at enormous length. When she ran out of material for one question, she would backtrack to the previous one and answer that again. It was a tactic that worked well.

Every time they tried to pin her down, on the border agency, or the crime commissioners, or something now called "the police landscape" (new to me: cops in copses?) she would wander off like a dog on an extendable lead. She couldn't escape, but it was very hard to drag her back.

To misquote Stevie Smith, she was not drowning but wavering. At one point she was asked if she had visited Bulgaria and Romania, the countries whose citizens will be able to come here freely from next year. She didn't answer. "That is an oblique question," she said.

"It is not an oblique question – it is very straightforward," said the committee chairman, Keith Vaz, the Vaz of Vaz. Finally she spat it out. "I have not visited Bulgaria or Romania!" she managed, and the whole committee cheered sarcastically. Another prod into the bog.